Latest news bulletin | April 22nd – Midday
Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tacitly admits Iran hit little in strikes on Israel.
00:11Emergency services in Gaza recover the bodies of at least 50 Palestinians from a mass grave
00:17in Khan Yunis.
00:20Zelensky welcomes US aid package, saying aid must reach the front line.
00:28Earth Day is coming up and this year's theme is Planet vs Plastics.
00:45Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tacitly acknowledged that Iran's drone and missile
00:50strike in Israel didn't hit very much.
00:53He dismissed the question at a meeting with the country's senior military, broadcast on
00:58Iranian state TV.
01:00Israeli media claimed that 99% of Iranian drones and missiles were shot down, with the
01:05rest causing only minor damage.
01:34Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles seeking to overwhelm Israel's defense systems
01:39two weeks ago.
01:41World's analysts have noted that both Iran and Israel did not press too much on the matter,
01:46saying that this could be an attempt of the two countries trying to avoid regional escalation.
01:57Emergency services in Gaza say they've recovered the bodies of at least 50 Palestinians from
02:02a mass grave in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
02:08Civil defense teams are reportedly still carrying out a search and recovery operation, with
02:13some reports suggesting there may be 150 bodies buried in the area.
02:21The Israeli defense forces withdrew from Khan Yunis two weeks ago after months of fierce
02:26fighting to root out Hamas, which has left much of the city in ruins.
02:32Meanwhile, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to land additional
02:37and painful blows on Hamas, in order to increase pressure on the group to free the remaining
02:42Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.
02:46And a spokesperson for the Israeli military said on Sunday that the country's forces had
03:05been deployed ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, which is due to start on Monday
03:10evening.
03:11Protesters in Israel carried mock coffins, calling for an immediate deal to release the
03:35remaining hostages held in Gaza.
03:40Israel says Hamas is still holding around 100 people captive.
03:45There have been almost weekly protests in Israel since October 7th to demand the government
03:50do more to secure their release.
03:59At least 22 people have been killed during Israeli night attacks on the southernmost
04:04town of the Gaza Strip, Rafa.
04:0618 of them were children, according to the Palestinian health authorities.
04:10Israel has been carrying out almost daily airstrikes on Rafa, where more than half of
04:15Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have found refuge.
04:20Israel continues to expand its ground offensive, despite international calls for restraint,
04:26including from the U.S., while on Saturday the U.S. House of Representatives approved
04:32a 24 billion euro aid package that includes billions of dollars in additional military
04:38aid and around 8 billion euros in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.
04:43The discussions about the new aid package for Israel led a group of pro-Palestinian
04:48activists to demonstrate in front of the capital in Washington, calling on Congress not to
04:54send the additional funds to Tel Aviv.
05:01Zelensky welcomed an 89 billion euro aid package that passed through the House of Representatives.
05:08The bulk will be allocated to Ukraine, with the rest going to countries like Israel and
05:13Taiwan.
05:14Voting in the U.S. Senate is expected on Tuesday.
05:18Zelensky warned that the package should be passed soon in order to reach the front line.
05:25This time between political decisions and real damage to the enemy at the front, between
05:32the approval of the package and the strength of our guys, the time must be as short as
05:37possible.
05:38And the strength is exactly the one that can really change the situation at the front.
05:45In Prague, residents staged a flash mob acting out the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
05:51The volunteers promoted the so-called Estonian plan, urging Western countries to commit 0.25%
05:58of their GDP in order to help Ukraine defeat Russia.
06:03The plan has been promoted by the Estonian Ministry of Defense.
06:10Hungarian public media dominates the election campaign for the European Parliament.
06:15Many form their image of the EU on this basis.
06:19Among voters we interviewed in southern Hungary, we met some who do not believe that an election
06:25can change anything, and others who said many didn't have the time to be properly informed.
06:49Some say younger people are the ones who care about EU politics.
07:12This isn't true for all.
07:27We spoke to someone who believes it is vital for as many people as possible to vote on
07:32the 9th of June.
08:03The Earth Day is celebrated every April 22nd since 1970.
08:08This year's theme is Planet vs. Plastic.
08:11A non-profit organization, The Ocean Cleanup, announced it had made a largest ever plastic
08:17catch in a river in Guatemala, preventing the waste from reaching the Caribbean Sea.
08:22272 truckloads of trash were caught in the Rio Las Vegas.
08:27You cannot get out the plastic of the ocean.
08:31You may be able to retrieve plastics, plastic articles near the coastline.
08:38You can collect it from beaches or from riverbanks.
08:41But once it's in the ocean, it's lost.
08:45Because a lot of it actually sinks to the seafloor or makes it to very remote beaches
08:51where nobody lives.
08:52A new report commissioned by the WWF and carried out by scientists in Germany projects that
08:58plastic pollution in the world's ocean could quadruple by 2050.
09:03Researchers found out that concentrations of microplastics above a dangerous threshold
09:09were already measured in the Mediterranean, the East China, the Yellow Seas and the Arctic
09:15Sea ice.
09:1688% of marine species studied were found to be negatively impacted by plastic.
09:23Europe is warming more rapidly than any other continent, according to new research from
09:31Copernicus, the EU's climate monitoring service.
09:342023 was marked by unprecedented heatwaves, fires and flooding.
09:39Overall, temperatures were 1.1% above average.
09:43We are already living in a climate that is fundamentally different from the climate our
09:48civilization evolved and as a people grew up in.
09:54And this new climate is, you know, often we talk about uncharted territory because it's
09:58true.
09:59We have never seen the sea so warm or so high in our lifetime.
10:03Temperatures are rising at twice the global average.
10:07It's also much wetter, leading to a complex mix of extremes within the continent.
10:13Look at the Europe as a whole, in terms of precipitation, it was 7% above average as a
10:20whole.
10:21But that's a complex figure because while, you know, northern Germany or part of Scandinavia
10:29or even the Balkans have seen a rather wet year as a whole, or the British Isle for what
10:36it matters, if you look at Andalusia or Catalonia or southern France, then the situation was
10:43much, much dire.
10:46Scientists say that the extreme weather events will become more frequent and planning to
10:51cope with them all will be challenging.
10:55We expect there to be wilder swings, in fact, between hot and dry and wet conditions.
11:03So swings between wet and dry becoming wilder.
11:07And of course, this is really difficult to plan for because it's much easier to plan
11:13your infrastructure and the way society goes about its business to have expected conditions
11:20over the year and to get even rainfall rather than coming in fits and starts.
11:26From rising sea temperatures to melting glaciers, Europe is witnessing the worst effects of
11:31global warming.
11:33The Copernicus researchers say that unless the trend is reversed, these impacts are only
11:38going to get worse.